I woke up Christmas morning (12/25/2010) at 6:30am. I could hear water trickling. It sounded like one of those stress reducing things in the doctors office that’s supposed to calm you down before a surgery. The ones with the water trickling down the glass onto rocks. I think my vasectomy doctor had one. It didn’t calm me down. Anyway back to my problem.

I found my whole kitchen floor submerged and my carpet in two bedrooms, a hallway, the living room and the kids downstairs playroom soaked. The HVAC Flex ducts were full of water and emptying out into the garage. And of course water was flowing out of both garage doors.

I filed a claim with Allstate. They sent out ServPro to dry the place out.

Right now the house sounds like an airport. Even the neighbors can hear hear it loud and clear. There are 20 blowers, 4 dehumidifiers and 2 high powered dehumidifiers for the hardwood floors.

The pets are terrified and will not leave my side. They follow me like I am the mother goose. Forget sleeping alone – that will never happen.

It’s 78 degrees in the house and feels very cold. I normally keep it at 67 and have ceiling fans on. I could slice up vegetables and dehydrate them just placing them on the kitchen counter without using my dehydrator. This is a great environment for making beef jerky. You don’t want to go too long here without blinking your eyes or they will get stuck. I don’t need deodorant, because the perspiration evaporates faster than I can make it. When I scratch, I really turn white. I have goose bumps all over me at 78 degrees. My bowl of apples have shriveled up. The cat poop in the litter box dries out real fast. The fish bowl would probably evaporate if I were not adding to it daily.

I thought I would do good at weight watchers this evening being I can’t have any excess water. In fact I need to be drinking gatorade to compensate for the water loss.

Can’t wait until this is over. IF YOU HAVE ANYTHING THAT NEEDS DRYING OUT, BRING IT OVER.

Below are some pictures of the equipment.

This is a vacuum system for the hardwood floors. It works with the high powered dehumidifiers. It has the plastic plates on the floor. These plates a supplied by a vacuum.

These are the blowers. There are 2 types. There is a total of 20 in the house.

Here is a close-up of the dehumidifier. There are 4 of these.

The advice I give here is don’t use a plastic line. Only use copper. Also if you add an inline filter, you added 2 connections that can fail and the filter itself. After this experience, I don’t plan to hook it back up. I can fill trays manually.

It is easy to forget that some of the Georgia Amendments expired on Jan 1 2010. The step riser height and the Minum Tread Depth have Expired.

Below is a copy and paste from the ammendments.

SECTION R311 MEANS OF EGRESS*Revise Section R311.5.3.1 ‘Riser height’ to add exception as follows:R311.5.3.1 Riser height.
Exception:
The first and the last riser may vary by an amount no greater than ¾ inch (19 mm) from the other risers in the flight of stairs.(Effective January 1, 2007; AMENDMENT EXPIRES JANUARY 1, 2010)*Revise first sentence of Section R311.5.3.2 ‘Tread depth’ to read as follows:
R311.5.3.2 Tread depth.
The minimum tread depth shall be 9 inches (229 mm). The tread depth…
(Remainder of section left unchanged.)(Effective January 1, 2007; AMENDMENT EXPIRES JANUARY 1, 2010)

Well bought some parts for my BCS 2 Wheel tractor on eBay. They were in Brasstown NC which required a trip through Elijay, Blue Ridge and Murphy NC.

The guy I bought the parts from raised chickens and lots of other critters. He made chicken coops out of old satellite dishes. I guess you could call this a “dish network”. He had hundreds of chickens and his ebay ID was roosterdude

But on the way home I found a recycled school bus. Remember you can click on these photo’s for bigger ones

Probably the only bracing is the horizontal siding. You could probably hook a cable to it, straighten it with a tractor and add diagonal bracing some 100+ years after it was built. Click on the smal picture to get a bigger one.

Well guys, some of your have already had this happen. My last day with Cherokee County will be 12/31/2009. It has been lots of fun with the building department. I would give anything to meet the county marshal on some illegal construction.

I’m feeling a little blue, but I have been very blessed. I’m by no means wealthy, but this is not going to cause me to be homeless.

I will be moving/downsizing from this house in Bartow County

To my new old house built in 1890 in Cherokee County

Just kidding. My wife told me she would never live in it. I kinda like this old house.

I can’t figure this one out. It is in a bad neighborhood. It’s the street I grew up on. We had to chain our car batteries down and we also left our cars unlocked so they wouldn’t break the windows. I can’t figure out what this is. Maybe they got some kind of illegal lab operation in there. Click on these small photos for a bigger one.

Here is the house.

Here is a close-up of those windows.

Here is a close up of the front door. It looks like the door on a freezer or a container for a bomb. this question if it’s an illegal lab operation.

I thought it might have been some new “GREEN” stuff, but I see a very old air conditioner is still in place.